1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet yellow ink, an ink set, an ink jet recording method, an ink cartridge, a recording unit, and an ink jet recording apparatus each of which is capable of providing an image excellent in image storage stability, especially environmental gas resistance and light resistance.
2. Related Background Art
An ink jet recording method is a recording method of applying a small ink droplet to any one of recording media such as plain paper and glossy media to form an image, and had become rapidly widespread owing to a reduction in costs and improvement in its recording rate. With the rapid spread of digital cameras in addition to an improvement in quality of images recorded by the method, the method has been generally used as a method of outputting photographic images comparable to the silver halide photograph.
In recent years, image quality has undergone improvement more than ever owing to, for example, extreme reduction in size of an ink droplet and an improvement of color gamut involved in the introduction of multi-color ink. Meanwhile, there have been growing demands for coloring materials and inks, and stricter properties have been required in respect of improvement of color developability and reliability concerning anti-clogging or ejection stability.
Meanwhile, the ink jet recording method is problematic in terms of, for example, the image storage stability of the resultant recorded article. In general, the recorded article obtained by means of the ink jet recording method is inferior in image storage stability to the silver halide photograph, and involves the emergence of a problem in that a coloring material on the recorded article is apt to deteriorate to cause a change in color tone of an image and the color fading of the image when the recorded article is exposed to light, humidity, heat, an environmental gas present in the air, or the like for a long period of time.
A large number of proposals have been conventionally made in order to improve light resistance out of image storage stability. A new coloring material has been proposed for improving the light resistance of each of yellow ink and magenta ink each of which has particularly low light resistance out of cyan ink, the magenta ink, and the yellow ink. C.I. Direct Yellow 86 (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H04-233975) and C.I Direct Yellow 173 (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H02-233781) have been proposed as yellow coloring materials. A novel monoazo dye (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H08-073791 and a novel anthrapyridone dye (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-209673) have been proposed as magenta coloring materials.
Active investigation has been made on fastness properties with respect to an environmental gas such as ozone, NOx, or SO2 present in a trace amount in the air, that is, environmental gas resistance that is of most concern out of image storage stability in an ink jet recorded article by taking the coloring material of cyan ink that is most susceptible to the environmental gas as an example. A novel phthalocyanine dye has been proposed as an example of the coloring material (see, for example, Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2002-249677 and No. 2000-303009).
The use of a specific coloring material having high fastness properties for each color has been proposed for improving the light resistance of an ink set in consideration of a color balance between inks of respective colors (see, for example, Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2001-288392, No. 2002-338853, No. 2002-294111, and No. 2003-138169). There has been also proposed a method of improving ozone resistance (see, for example, Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2003-238850 and No. 2003-286423).
However, no technique in consideration of a color fading balance has been conventionally established in terms of a correlation between yellow ink and any other color ink.